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Reasons Not to Consider Our Options

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 August 2020

JEFFREY SEIDMAN Open the ORCID record for JEFFREY SEIDMAN [Opens in a new window]
JEFFREY SEIDMAN*
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VASSAR [email protected]
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Abstract

I argue that a practical deliberator may have good reasons not to consider some option even though that option is what there is most reason, all things considered, for her to do. The most interesting reasons not to consider an option arise in cases where an agent cannot be compensated in kind for the loss of goods that she values. Where this is the case, an attitude of conservatism is warranted: it is reasonable to begin deliberation by considering only ‘no-regrets’ options, and to proceed to considering other possibilities only when the cost of continuing to consider only no-regrets options has become intolerably high. The account that I develop illuminates intuitions that help motivate deontological moral thought, and it can shed light on the complaint that there is something wrong with the way in which schematic thought experiments are frequently used in philosophy to drive moral theorizing.

Keywords

reasonsdeliberationpractical reasoningvaluingmoral psychologyconservatism
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the American Philosophical Association , Volume 6 , Issue 3 , Fall 2020 , pp. 353 - 371
Copyright
Copyright © American Philosophical Association 2020

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Footnotes

Thanks to Jamie Kelly, Sofia Ortiz-Hinojosa, and Chris Raymond for helpful comments during a work-in-progress seminar at Vassar College and to Andrei Buckareff and an audience at Marist College, where I presented an ancestor of this paper.

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